Friday, May 20, 2016

The Economist changes its mind about referendums

One and a half years ago the magazine The Economist published an editorial
with the title "Catalonia's future: let them vote." It argued that,
although Catalan independence was a bad idea, it should be defeated in a
referendum. This was ammunition not only for separatists, but also for
many reasonably minded people who are against independence but for a
variety of reasons believe that a referendum about this idea that they
do not like would be a good thing. Now The Economist (the
editorials and articles are not signed by any individual in this
magazine) has changed its mind. In the issue just published it runs an editorial against the notion that referendums are in general a good idea, and it has a more specific piece
explaining that the fashion of holding referendums in Europe is a bad
idea. Perhaps it is because, being a British publication, they are
experiencing what is the dangerous descent into a democracy of bad
quality with the Brexit referendum. Both in the editorial and in the
article, they regret that with the Scottish referendum the membership of
the Scottish separatists, although they lost the referendum, has
quadrupled. They also repeat some well known arguments against
referendums, such as the inability of this mechanism to consider
trade-offs and therefore making it very likely that they will result
into incompatible bundles of policies. "Referendum fever (...) makes it
increasingly hard to agree on transnational policies. Treaties are
generally signed by governments and then ratified by legislatures.
Adding referendums to the mix hugely complicates matters. “It’s almost
impossible now to see how 28 states would ratify an EU reform treaty,”
says Stefan Lehne of Carnegie Europe, a think-tank. Minorities of voters
in smaller countries may be able to stymie Europe-wide policies; just
32% of Dutch voters took part in the Ukraine referendum. This could
cripple the European project. “Europe cannot exist as a union of
referendums,” says Ivan Krastev, head of the Centre for Liberal
Strategies, a Bulgarian think-tank."